by Honora Wolfe

Most medium-to-large companies have some presence in the social media world. Among the Fortune 100 (largest international corporations), for example, 65% use Twitter, 54% use Facebook, 50% use YouTube, 33% have a blog.

Fundamentally, companies of all sizes use social media to grow sales but more importantly to strengthen branding. At its best, social media as part of a total marketing strategy may turn strangers into friends, friends into customers, and, maybe, customers into your own team of advertising reps! This works because you need other people to share about you! We all know the best advertising is word of mouth. The statistics on this phenom say that only 14% of people believe what you say about yourself…80% believe what your customers say about you. Social Media is a way to get them talking and sharing (hopefully positively) about you.

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What Social Media at its best is NOT, is a place to beg for business. It is a conversation and a place to share value added content with people who may have an affinity for what your business is about. With regard to this, there is a 90/10 rule…..for every nine cool things you share on social media, then you get to post one thing specific to your product or service.

What can you post that people will find useful?
1. Archived content: Anything that you have written or recorded in the past in any forum whatsoever that is still relevant content.
2. New content that you create in any medium (audio, video, print)
3. Ways to interact with you and build community (a survey, a contest, an open-ended question asking for comments)
4. Pointing to other people’s content that is useful and relevant to your market (this is great on Twitter and Facebook, and on LinkedIn as well)
5. People love video product comparisons, “Ten Tips to….” type articles or “Ten Reasons to Avoid…” type articles, and anything that is a little controversial. Request feedback and comments.

How to find out what conversations are already taking place?
What are people talking about in our field, anyway? One good way is to go to Twitter, create an account (even if you never look at it again), and type #acupuncture or #chinese herbal medicine or #chinese medicine or #alternative health or whatever other search keyword string you want to know about. Then click on some of the links and see what opens up. It’s huge. Then join the conversation by commenting on lots of other people’s posts. You can search YouTube for relevant videos, which you can share on your Facebook or Twitter pages as part of your community building and sharing participation. When you comment on other people’s posts in both Facebook and Twitter….you WILL get more followers and friends.

Post once, then spread to all other places in your Social Media world at once.
You can do this by using a free software/website called TweetDeck…or Ping.fm, or Hoot Suite. This is important so that you don’t spend too much time in the black hole of your computer screen.

Link your website world and your social media
You can put links on your homepage that say “Click Here to follow us on Twitter” (or Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn.). It’s easy to download the link from any of these websites. You will be doing the same thing in reverse when you post a blog or video on your website and someone sees the link on Twitter or Facebook and then gets to your website from there.

WIIFM?
You can, with your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and LinkedIn Colleague offer some low-risk thing for them to do or get to interact with you more. Offer them an Ebook, an article, access to a video or audio, or to post an “Ask the Acupuncturist” question, or a free consultation about their health in person or by phone. When they click, they are taken to the page in your website or Blog account where they can do that action or get that resource. You could also create a free webinar series to which you could invite them. Also, if you have lots of free articles on your website or lots of CM research, offer them a link to go and check them out. Of course, when they get to your website, from there they could “ask the acupuncturist”, schedule a consultation, watch your video, or sign up for your class(es), webinar series, etc. You get the idea.

That’s enough for now.

NEXT BLOG: the importance of video.